Ken Aptekar toys with masterpieces from the past by using the history of art as his playground. He time-travels old paintings into the present by his sly repainting joined to his witty, disarming and intimate texts. Here’s the idea: Paintings are nothing on their own, they start to mean something only when you talk back to them. Aptekar’s work turns this conviction into paintings on wood panels over which he bolts glass sandblasted with text.
Ken Aptekar, OH GROW UP, 2011, 35″ x 35″, oil/wood, sandblasted glass, bolts, after Asher Durand, The Solitary Oak (The Old Oak), 1844, NY Historical Society